A supermassive binary black hole with triple disks

Understand

Hierarchical structure formation inevitably leads to the formation of supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) with a sub-parsec separation in galactic nuclei.

• However, to date there has been no unambiguous detection of such systems.
• In an effort to search for potential observational signatures of supermassive BBHs, we performed high-resolution smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of two black holes in a binary of moderate eccentricity surrounded by a circumbinary disk.
• Building on our previous work, which has shown that gas can periodically transfer from the circumbinary disk to the black holes when the binary is on an eccentric orbit, the current set of simulations focuses on the formation of the individual accretion disks, their evolution and mutual interaction, and the predicted radiative signature.